Odessa is a warm water port, but of small military value. Because Turkey controls the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, NATO can control ships moving between Odessa and the Mediterranean Sea. The city has two important ports: Odessa itself and Yuzhne. Yuzhne is an oil terminal that is important to the world. It is in Odessa's suburbs. Another important port, Chornomorsk, is in the same oblast, to the south-west of Odessa. Important transportation comes together at these ports. Railways and pipelines come to these ports. Pipelines connect Odessa's oil and chemical factories to Russia's and the EU's.

Odessa Сircuit Court building and Church of the monastery of St. Panteleimon (church consecrated in 1895; used as a planetarium in 1961–1991).

Odessa is the fifth-largest city in Ukraine and its most important trading city. In the 19th century it was the fourth city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Warsaw.[2] Its old buildings seem more Mediterranean than Russian. They were made like French and Italian buildings. People in Odessa could always laugh and had a spirit of freedom. The reason is probably because it is a nice place and because the people accept others. They let others be the kind of people that they are.

The Ottoman Empire controlled Khadjibey after 1529. The region surrounding Khadjibey was named Yedisan. In the middle of the 18th century, the Ottomans rebuilt a fortress at Khadjibey. It was named Eni Dunia (Turkish: Yeni Dünya, literally "new world").

The Russian government decided to build a naval fortress on the ruins of Khadjibey city in 1794. This became the city named Odessa by January 1795. In that year its new name was first written in government letters. The reasons for the new name are lost but people have made stories. According to one of the stories, when someone said Odessos should be the name for the new Russian port, Catherine II said that all names in the South of the Empire were already 'masculine,' and she did not want another one, so she decided to change it to more 'feminine' Odessa. This story may be false. There were at least two cities (Eupatoria and Theodosia) with names that sound 'feminine' for a Russian; also, Catherine II did not speak Russian when she was a child, and lastly, all cities are feminine in Greek (and in Latin). Another story is that the name 'Odessa' is from word-play in French. French was then the language spoken at the Russian court. 'Plenty of water' is assez d'eau in French. If one says this backwards, it sounds like the Greek colony's name. Word-play about water makes sense. Odessa is next to a very big body of water but has a little fresh water. Anyhow, there is still a link with the name of the old Greek colony. So there may be some truth in the things people said long ago.

The new city quickly became a major success. Its early growth owed much to the work of the Duc de Richelieu, who was the city's governor between 1803–1814. Having fled the French Revolution, he had served in Catherine's army against the Turks. He is credited with designing the city and organising its amenities and infrastructure, and is considered one of the founding fathers of Odessa, together with another Frenchman, Count Alexandre Langeron, who succeeded him in office. Richelieu is commemorated by a bronze statue, unveiled in 1828 to a design by Ivan Martos.

In 1819 the city was made a free port, a status it retained until 1859. It became home to an extremely diverse population of Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Armenians, Italians, Frenchmen, Germans and traders representing many other European nationalities (hence numerous 'ethnic' names on the city's map, e.g., Frantsuszkiy (French) and Italianskiy (Italian) Boulevards, Grecheskaya (Greek), Evreyskaya (Jewish), Arnautskaya (Albanian) Streets). Its cosmopolitan nature was documented by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who lived in internal exile in Odessa between 1823–1824. In his letters he wrote that Odessa was a city where "you can smell Europe. French is spoken and there are European papers and magazines to read".

Odessa's growth was interrupted by the Crimean War of 1853–1856, during which it was bombarded by British and French naval forces. It soon recovered and the growth in trade made Odessa Russia's largest grain-exporting port. In 1866 the city was linked by rail with Kiev and Kharkiv as well as Iaşi, Romania.

Richelieu Street and the Opera Theatre in the 1890s.

The city became the home of a large Jewish community during the 19th century, and by 1897 Jews were estimated to be about 37% of the population. They were, however, repeatedly subjected to severe persecution. Pogroms were carried out in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, and 1905. Many Jews fled abroad, particularly to Palestine after 1882, and the city became an important base of support for Zionism.

In 1905 Odessa was the place of a workers' uprising supported by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin (also see Battleship Potemkin uprising) and Lenin's Iskra. Sergei Eisenstein's famous motion picture The Battleship Potemkin commemorated the uprising and included a scene where hundreds of Odessan citizens were killed on the great stone staircase (now popularly known as the "Potemkin Steps"), in one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history. At the top of the steps, which lead down to the port, stands a statue of Richelieu. The actual massacre took place in streets nearby, not on the steps themselves, but the movie caused many to visit Odessa to see the site of the "slaughter". The steps continue to be a tourist attraction. The film was made at Odessa's Cinema Factory, one of the oldest cinema studios in the former Soviet Union.

The people of Odessa suffered from a great famine that occurred in 1921–1922 as a result of the war. Romanian and German forces from 1941–1944 occupied the city during World War II, causing severe damage and many casualties.

Under the Axis occupation, approximately 60,000 Odessans (mostly Jews) were either massacred or deported. Many parts of Odessa were damaged during its fall and later recapture in April 1944, when the city was finally liberated by the Soviet Army. It was one of the first four Soviet cities to be awarded the title of "Hero City" in 1945.

During the 1960s and 1970s the city grew tremendously. Nevertheless, between the 1970s and 1990s, the majority of Odessa's surviving Jews emigrated to Israel, the United States and other Western countries. Large-scale domestic migrationof Odessan middle and upper classes to Moscow and Leningradthat offered even greater opportunities for career advancement. But the city's grew rapidly by filling the void with new rural migrants elsewhere from Ukraine, industrial professionals invited from Russia as well as other Soviet republics. Despite being part of Ukraine Socialist Republic, the city preserved and somewhat reinforced its unique cosmopolitan mix of Russian/Ukrainian/Mediterranean culture and a predominantly Russophone environment with a uniquely accented dialect of Russian spoken in the city. The city's Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Armenian, Moldovan and Azeri and Jewish communities have influenced different aspects of Odessa.

In 1991, after the collapse of Communism, the city became part of newly independent Ukraine. Today Odessa is a city of around 1.1 million people. The city's industries include shipbuilding, oil refining, chemicals, metalworking and food processing. Odessa is also a Ukrainian navalbase and home to a fishing fleet. It is also known for its huge outdoor market, the Seventh-Kilometer Market.

Odessa is (Google Map) on terraced hills overlooking a small harbor, approximately 31 km (19 mi.) north of the estuary of the Dniester river and some 443 km (275 mi) south of the Ukrainian capital Kiev. The city has a continental climate (Dfa in the Köppen climate classification) with average temperatures in January of -2 °C (29 °F), and July of 22 °C (73 °F). It averages only 350 mm (14 in) of precipitation annually.

Most of the city's 19th century houses were built of limestone mined nearby. Abandoned mines were later used and broadened by local smugglers. This created a complicated labyrinth of underground tunnels beneath Odessa, known as "catacombs". They are a now a great attraction for extreme tourists. Such tours, however, are not officially sanctioned and are dangerous because the layout of the catacombs has not been fully mapped and the tunnels themselves are unsafe. These tunnels are a primary reason why subway was never built in Odessa.

The economy of Odessa is based its port and close distance to nearby ice-free ports in the mouths of the Dnieper, the Southern Bug, the Dniester and the Danube rivers. During the Soviet period Odessa was the USSR's largest trading port. Since Ukraine's independence, Odessa remains the busiest international port in the country. Odessa is also a home to almost 5% of all IT companies registered in Ukraine.[5] That helps the city to thrive and attract software programmers from other cities of Ukraine and abroad.[6]